And your favourite literary hero and heroine?

It’s always dangerous, I believe, to have heroes, but I do admire the author who gave us the wonders of Anna Karenina, say, and to come back to Conrad, how about this first paragraph of Lord Jim? ‘He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop to the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a barging bull’. I am in awe of Jim, with his ‘ability in the abstract’.

How old were you when your first book appeared?

I was thirty-one. I had been writing every day for ten years. After producing three unredeemable novels, I began in 1970 to write the stories that would make up The Fat Man in History. It was Michael Wilding who sent them to University of Queensland Press, and Craig Munro who published them. After ten years it all happened very quickly. Just being published was the prize, although my secret hope was that the book might be reviewed. On Saturday, 24 September 1974 I had travelled to Maldon in Victoria and bought The Australian at the local newsagency. And there was Robert Adamson reviewing The Fat Man in History: ‘His imagination is fired by genius.’ Jesus Christ! I nearly died.

How do you regard publishers?

Here’s what I wrote in 2003. ‘I am Bob McCorkle, I said again … I am your author, Mr Weiss. But he shrieked at me to get out. Shrieked! At me! He was dressed only in shirt and underpants, but he was my publisher. I loved him. I took off my coat and held it out so he could cover himself, but he struck it from my hand and cried Monster!’

That was from My Life as a Fake. I still feel the same way, but cannot believe I used those exclamation marks.

Do you feel artists are valued in our society?

I assume you mean living artists? In the United States, where I live, no. In Australia, sometimes, yes.